Quotes from Will Durant

Knowledge is the eye of desire and can become the pilot of the soul.

One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.

To seek, beneath the universal strife, the hidden harmony of things.

Civilization begins with order, grows with liberty, and dies with chaos.

As soon as liberty is complete it dies in anarchy.

The most interesting thing in the world is another human being who wonders, suffers and raises the questions that have bothered him to the last day of his life, knowing he will never get the answers.

Every science begins as philosophy and ends as art.

Moral codes adjust themselves to environmental conditions.

We Americans are the best informed people on earth as to the events of the last twenty-four hours we are the not the best informed as the events of the last sixty centuries.

To speak ill of others is a dishonest way of praising ourselves.

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is the story of what happened on the banks. Historians are pessimists because they ignore the banks for the river.

In my youth I stressed freedom, and in my old age I stress order. I have made the great discovery that liberty is a product of order.

There is nothing in socialism that a little age or a little money will not cure.

Bankers know that history is inflationary and that money is the last thing a wise man will hoard.

Civilization is the order and freedom is promoting cultural activity.

It may be true that you can't fool all the people all the time, but you can fool enough of them to rule a large country.

We are living in the excesses of freedom. Just take a look at 42nd Street and Broadway.

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing song.

Education is a progressive discovery of our ignorance.

Forget past mistakes. Forget failures. Forget everything except what you're going to do now and do it.

Never mind your happiness; do your duty.

Nothing is new except arrangement.

The health of nations is more important than the wealth of nations.

The laws that Charondas gave to Catana,... A man might divorce his wife, or a wife her husband, said Charondas, but then he or she must not marry anyone younger than the divorced mate.